His primary research interests included soil liquefaction, site response analysis, seismic slope stability, and hazard analysis. He continues to conduct research work in the area of performance-based earthquake engineering, specifically the integration of probabilistic response analyses with probabilistic seismic hazard analyses.

Kramer is the author of the book Geotechnical Earthquake Engineering and of numerous technical papers and reports. He has been the recipient of the Presidential Young Investigator Award from the National Science Foundation, the Arthur Casagrande Professional Development Award from ASCE, a Walter Huber Research Prize from ASCE, the 2009 and 2017 Norman Medals from ASCE, the 2018 H. Bolton Seed Medal from ASCE, and the 2018 Nabor Carillo Lecture Award from the Mexican Society of Geotechnical Engineering. He was named as a Distinguished Member of ASCE and elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2020. Kramer was a Senior Research Scientist in the International Centre for Geohazards at the Norwegian Geotechnical Institute (NGI) in 2003, and is also a member of the faculty of the European School for Advanced Studies in the Reduction of Seismic Risk (the ROSE School) at the University of Pavia in Italy.